Tarotscopes – January 2018

Soul-Smart Monthly Tarotscopes by Star Sight Tarot

Happy Birthday, Capricorn! As the new year begins, you have some powerful opportunities to reshape your relationship to work, productivity, and recognition. What you thought was the key to your success may turn out to have been just a step towards some greater purpose that has yet to be revealed. The trick is to understand this change of course for what it is—an opportunity for powerful growth and transformation—rather than seeing it as a setback. If the road ahead looks a little more muddy and indistinct, if your grand plan suddenly doesn’t seem so grand, be careful that you don’t succumb to the temptation to wallow in pessimism or self-doubt. You are in a moment of shifting and recalibrating which is never exactly a comfortable experience, but it is that discomfort that motivates new growth and movement towards your next horizon. This month the new moon in Capricorn on the 16th will provide a still, calm space during which you can set some new intentions. Let everyone else make their New Year’s resolutions on the first of the year. For you, the time to plant your seeds is under the dark cover of the moon-less night. What grows there may take time to reveal itself to you, but when it does you and those around you will marvel at what you have brought forth.

This is an exciting month for you, Aquarius! The Nine of Pentacles brings a chance for you to finally sit back and enjoy the life you have been building for yourself. In this card, nine pentacles sit in a tight diamond, flanked on each side by feathers. This symbolizes that your resources—your money, your time, your friends and family—are all gathered close to you at this time. You have everything you need in order to feel secure. At the same time, the feathers show that you also have the freedom to venture out and explore from the safety of your home base. This is a fortuitous balance, as it allows you to branch out and find new sources of stimulation without having to risk the things that are most important to you. Your task then this month is to take advantage of those opportunities that arise to experience something new and different, having faith that they won’t upset the balance of your life in a negative way. If things are not yet the way you want them, take this as a sign to actively mold your life into the shape you want. You are the architect of your own experience. As this new year begins, true contentment is within your grasp.

Oh, Pisces. What would it take for you to see the abundance that is all around you? Whatever you feel you’ve lost, whatever grief you’ve experienced, it is always balanced by a cup that is brimming with love, life, and new possibilities. This is the continuous cycle of things and one that it is so easy to lose sight of when life doesn’t go your way. It’s easy to say that it’s just a matter of perspective, but shifting how you see the world is no simple task. In fact, it is the true nature of our soul’s journey here on Earth: We each begin with a set of tools and ideas about our lives. We tell a certain story to ourselves over and over about who we are, what has happened to us, what we are capable of. We come to believe these stories as though they were written in stone—unchangeable as the most stable of mountains. And yet slowly we learn that even mountains are meant to shift and change. They may not move at a perceptible pace, but change they do. And in the same way, our vision of ourselves and our lives can make incremental movements that one day add up to create an entirely new version of what is possible, of who we are, of what we have been through. Even the past can be rewritten, but it takes a certain dedication to living in the present and a constant vigilance regarding the way we talk to ourselves, and the thoughts we allow to fill our minds and hearts. Let this truth wash over you now as the new year begins: Your world is not necessarily what it seems.

What will you channel as this new year begins, Aries? You carry a powerful source of strength with you wherever you go, but it is up to you to keep tabs on whether it is a power that is used for positive change or destructive eruption. That fiery heart of yours can breed passionate excitement as well as at times a dangerous spark that can flare up and strike out if it is not channeled in a productive way. In order to keep things under control, your cards this month suggest that you take a closer look at what it is that you are trying to cultivate in your life. Your protective streak can cause you to lash out at others if you feel that something you care for deeply is in danger of being taken away from you. What if instead you tried to direct some of that self-protective energy outward towards the people around you? What if you became fiercely protective of everyone you encountered, as though they were all a part of your inner circle? After all, we are all connected in this convoluted, breathtaking, frustrating web we call humanity. Let others see the spark of creation you carry within you—by sharing it with others, the goodness you seek will multiply exponentially.

As the new year gets under way, Taurus, you are being asked to carefully examine your life and the opportunities that present themselves to you. There may be a whole laundry list of things that you are dissatisfied with as 2018 begins. It’s natural this time of year to feel that everything needs to be thrown out in favor of some new shiny version of your life and yourself. But don’t be too quick to shed that old skin without taking some time to really reflect on what shape you’d like your life to take in the new year. It’s imperative to get really clear on what it is you want because your cards suggest that you will have no shortage of offers coming your way in the near future. Rather than take the first thing that comes along, you’ll want to make sure that any opportunities on the table are truly in line with the vision you have for yourself and your future. You have a crazy amount of potential, talent, and knowledge waiting to be unleashed when the time is right. If you rush it, you risk finding yourself in a situation that is not so different from where you are now. However, if you take the time to get clear on your desires and priorities, you’ll be poised to strike when the right thing comes your way.

Happy new year, Gemini! This year kicks off with a chance for you to do some serious soul searching about your priorities. This is a natural time of year for reflection, for really examining the elements that make up your life and assessing which are working for you and which aren’t. Is there something that has been weighing you down lately? Where are you putting your energy? What needs to change? The Two of Pentacles reversed suggests that there is an imbalance in your life that is causing you to give too much attention to something at the expense of another area where it is really needed. The way to approach this conundrum is by taking a step back and getting a bird’s eye view on your life. You can accomplish this most easily by getting some literal distance from your day-to-day existence so that you can gain some much needed perspective. You can certainly do this by traveling far from your home—to a foreign country for example—but the same kind of detachment can be obtained by taking a hike or a day trip or even just doing something outside of your normal routine like going to a spa or meditation group. I often find that driving, flying, walking to a destination sets my mind to working in new ways that allows for a greater measure of objectivity in thinking about the same old questions and problems. Letting yourself brainstorm from this place of detachment may give you the angle you need to see things in a whole new light.

The new year brings some powerful medicine for you, Cancer. The Devil card when reversed signals that the time is ripe for you to break out of whatever it is that is binding you. Take some time to reflect on your attachments and think about whether any of them have crept into obsessive or addictive territory. When our attachments become a source of anxiety or grasping, they can no longer provide us with joy and sustenance. That fierce desire we feel to protect whatever it is we love, or whatever we think we need, can become the chain that keeps us from moving forward and growing in the ways we need to. The message from your cards at this time is that on some level you already know this and you are beginning to take steps towards your own greater freedom. The Devil sounds so scary and we are conditioned to think of this archetype as something that only brings treachery and pain, but the Devil brings us a much needed gift. The Devil reflects none other than the human condition—the attachment to the material world that stems from our need for survival. It comes from a logical enough place—we need money to eat! we need love to feel joy and connection!—but it always has the potential to swing towards excess, toward clinging and worry. The difficult irony here is that the truest way to protect the things and people you love is by letting them break free. And in turn doing so will allow you to find your own freedom.

Leo, what would happen if you made it your New Year’s resolution to stop grinding so hard and gave yourself permission instead to just be? You’ve been putting your shoulder to the wheel, trying to achieve the things you think you need to have in order to live the life you always thought you wanted, but what if there was a whole host of other options for ways of living that you haven’t thought of? Or that you haven’t allowed yourself to entertain as possibilities for your own life? You don’t need to fit into any particular mold in order to be happy. In fact, your cards are telling you that the kind of security and legacy you’ve been striving for are not actually the key to your particular brand of satisfaction and joy. The answer lies not in stowing things away for the future, but in taking in your immediate surroundings in the present moment and soaking up the here and now. In order to conceive of new ways of being, imagine that you’ve been trying to color in a particular picture by always staying within the lines, using the right colors, etc., when one day you realize that by stepping back a little and widening your focus you can actually find room to draw an entirely new picture that is specific to you. Now is an ideal time to start forming the contours of your one unique life.

Virgo, your cards this month bring a calm and positive energy—a great way to begin the new year! The Three of Pentacles signifies the laying of foundations which, in combination with your oracle card “renew,” suggests a time of rebirth and new growth. However, this isn’t a sudden shift or jolt into a new way of being. Your rebirth is one that will build slowly with care and intention. Each choice you make now, each step, each action will bring you another inch closer to the new form that your life is going to take in 2018. There is great stability and sureness in this new direction for you. Let that bring you strength if you ever start to doubt the choices you are making. It can take time to understand the shape of what you are creating when you are up close to it. Eventually you will have come far enough to look back and see what you have made and the whole picture will come into focus. In retrospect, it will seem as though you had planned it all from the beginning. For now, it is enough to keep putting one foot in front of the other and to have faith that your efforts are leading you towards something great. Let that knowledge bring you renewed energy as the year gets under way.

Libra, the changing of the calendar year brings you a reminder to expand outward from the confines of your daily life, from the desire to carefully measure out how you expend your energy each day. Your airy sign can sometimes get lost in the tendency to intellectualize, which can lead to an attempt to apply logic and calculation where they aren’t always entirely helpful. And while it is your natural proclivity to want everything to balance out, there is something to be said for letting things get out of balance every now and then. Your cards this month suggest that you resist the temptation to carefully weigh all of your actions and options every step of the way and instead reach outward towards new experiences and perspectives. Rock the boat a little. Try something you’ve never done before. Let yourself get a little off kilter if it means that you are able to break out of your routine and find new sources of stimulation. It is particularly important for you to direct some energy towards things that have nothing to do with your own life. Study the cosmos or a foreign language. Read a biography of someone you’ve always found interesting. The wealth of new knowledge you gather to you will in turn enrich your life in ways that may surprise and startle you.

New Year’s resolutions are your jam, Scorpio. This time of year has you reevaluating your life, looking for ways to overhaul, makeover, rejuvenate, and renovate. This “out with the old, in with the new” attitude is something that comes very naturally to your continually transforming sign. After all, the highest expression of the Scorpio is the Phoenix, always ready to rise from the ashes at a moment’s notice. The only trouble is you can become all too good at sloughing off old skin and leaving things behind the moment they start to seem less than perfect. Your cards this month are asking you to try something radically different for you. What if you could find a way to be reborn not by leaving everything behind, but by staying right where you are? Rather than changing your environment, your job, your partner, your town, in the hopes of effecting an inner transformation, see if you can transform yourself from the inside out without changing a thing. What would that look like for you? When it comes to finding the “new you,” the most radical thing you can do right now is to stay exactly as you are. This is your growth edge—the place where you stand to learn the most. It won’t necessarily be easy, but hey, you may find that it’s a whole lot easier than starting over.

Dear Sagittarius, there is something rich and earthy that has been slowly pushing its way up to the surface of your consciousness lately. Some old buried treasure—from your past, your childhood, your deep subconscious mind—is trying to find its way back to you. What gleaming jewels, what veins of gold have been forgotten and covered over along the path of your life? You’ve been trying so hard to manifest your dreams by conjuring them out of thin air, without realizing that what you’ve been seeking has been with you all along. The work, then, is not about creating what you want ex nihilo—by making something out of nothing. That takes far too much energy and ultimately is really impossible. The work ahead of you is instead a labor of uncovering, digging down, dusting off. It is the work of deep recall, of awakening what has lain dormant, of raising from the dead. Once you drag those buried treasures back up into the light of day, you’ll be able to see so clearly the role they are meant to play in the life you are so diligently trying to build.

Kate is a tarot reader, writer, academic, and founder of Star Sight Tarot. She believes that the tarot has great transformative power and can give us deep insight into our lives, our patterns, and our choices. Tarot has been instrumental in her own journey of personal development and she loves bringing its gift of guidance to her clients. Visit StarSightTarot.com for more.